If the fight comes close to the drama of the negotiations, boxing fans are in for a treat.

After more than a month of roller-coaster talks, middleweight champion Jermain Taylor and mandatory challenger Winky Wright agreed Friday to meet June 17 on HBO, just a couple of days after the fight seemed to implode when Wright fired promoter Gary Shaw.

The site is still undecided, but Taylor promoter Lou DiBella said three cities were in the running: Las Vegas; Memphis, Tenn.; and Atlanta.

The deal averted a WBC purse bid Friday afternoon and ended several days of chaos.

"Everything is now done, 100 percent," said an obviously irritated Shaw, who patched things up with Wright late Thursday in a move that salvaged the fight. "We worked through Thursday night. I'm happy, all the parties are happy. But could I have lived without the drama? Could you live without a splinter in your big toe?"

Said DiBella: "The deal is done, even though it is not officially signed. But at this point, if they don't sign, they will burn in the fires of hell. It's done. We just have to get everyone in place to sign it, but at this point it's a matter of technicalities. If not for Gary's involvement I would not have let the deal happen. It was amateur hour on Winky's side except for Gary Shaw. I give Gary credit for putting up with the embarrassment and for negotiating like a gentleman and a professional."

All seemed well Monday night, when DiBella and Shaw finally finished hammering out a deal after weeks of sometimes contentious talks.

The deal agreed to would give Taylor (25-0, 17 KOs) 55 percent and Wright 45 percent of a nearly $9 million pot, and the sides would avoid the WBC purse bid, which would have put the fight on the auction block for any promoter to win the right to promote it.

The $9 million included a $6.5 million license fee from HBO, which desperately wanted to put a marquee fight live on the network instead of on pay-per-view, so it essentially bought out what probably would have been a profitable HBO PPV fight.

However, just as DiBella and Shaw were set to exchange contracts for signatures Monday night, Wright (50-3, 25 KOs) fired Shaw, who had been representing him for the past few fights even though they didn't have a contract with each other.

Wright wanted to get his newly formed company, Winky Promotions, off the ground and felt that Shaw's involvement would overshadow his efforts.

"A lot of this came down because I wanted to do my own promotional thing, but the main thing was to do the fight for the people," Wright said. "I was going to say I didn't want the fight. I was going to let it go. But the fans, everywhere I go, people tell me they want the fight.

"All the people saying bad things about me don't really know me. If I am wrong for trying to build my own promotional company, then anyone who jumped into a new business is wrong. I have nothing against Gary. It ain't about Gary. It's about me providing something for the future. Now that I am on top, I can catch people's eyes, which I can't do when I am not on top. For people who say I am wrong, did they say that to Gary when he left Main Events and started his own company? Did they say it when Oscar De La Hoya left Bob Arum and started his own company? We grow as people and businessmen. Growth is about making changes and I made changes. Besides, I never had a contract with Gary Shaw."

However, because Shaw had negotiated on Wright's behalf with DiBella and HBO, neither would move forward with the fight if he [Shaw]* wasn't involved.

That disrupted Wright's plan to bring in De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions as a co-promoter with him for one fight and forced him to make a decision: Get back with Shaw and take the deal on the table or go to a purse bid and get less money and less control over the promotion.

Wright, who Monday was meeting with Golden Boy behind Shaw's back while he was in Las Vegas trying to finish a site deal, ultimately decided to work things out with Shaw for one more fight, and take the deal under the terms that had been negotiated.

However, DiBella, who was fed up with Wright's indecision, pulled his offer off the table and threatened to go to Friday's purse bid, under which the Taylor side would be entitled to 60 percent of the winning offer and Wright only 40 percent.

Eventually, DiBella relented and put the original deal back on the table for Wright to sign, although he did get minor concessions.

"All of this didn't prove anything. It didn't get anywhere," Shaw said. "It just created a mess. It muddied names and created an unnecessary mess."

Two concessions that DiBella got were that Winky Promotions, which would have had status as one of the official promoters, giving its logo exposure, has been excised from involvement in the fight. Also, DiBella and Taylor have an out clause should Wright try to fire Shaw before the fight takes place.

"It's been real crazy but I'm definitely happy that the fight is on," Wright said. "But I didn't want the fight the way we got it. I could have said no. It was the fact that the fans wanted that fight. I don't feel that Jermain is a bigger name fighter than me. He fought Bernard Hopkins [twice], I fought Tito Trinidad and Shane Mosley [twice]. I think it should have been on fair grounds, 50-50, but we're not crying over spilled milk."

"For the last week, we spent some torturous days trying to resurrect the fight and I think at the 11th hour, prior to the purse offer, Winky finally woke up and realized that the only way the fight was happening was with Lou and Gary as promoters, and he signed onto the fight," said HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg, who was instrumental in keeping the fight off of pay-per-view.

Wright conceded that he could have gone about the negotiations better.

"It definitely should have been handled better and differently," Wright said. "If Gary did all the work, I will give Gary what he deserves to get for the fight, but I want my own promotion to do the fight. But, yes, it could have been worked out better and [some of] the problems were my fault."

Wright said had the fight gone to a purse bid, he would have walked away from it because he could not see accepting only 40 percent.

"I'm blessed right now and I'm not ungrateful for what I have," Wright said. "But don't pay me so much less than what you pay the other guy. But now we got the fight at 55-45, so cool. But I am not going to keep taking the short end to make these fight happen. I'm just trying to be a better businessman."

By fighting Wright, Taylor will be in his third major fight in a row. The 2000 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist won the title in July on a close decision against Bernard Hopkins and then outpointed him again in the December rematch.

"I give my kid all the credit in the world because at any time he would have been justified to say, 'Enough is enough, forget Winky Wright.' But he is a champion and he believes in himself, and he wanted to give the people what they wanted," DiBella said of Taylor. "He is confident he is going to win. Winky really riled up my kid with all of his crap, and he is angry as hell. He has the eye of the tiger right now."

Quotable: "I respect Wright, but there's no way somebody is going to come knock on the door at my house and beat me up. He's going to have to kill me to beat me, and nobody has ever killed anybody with just defense."

-- middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, talking about the defensive style of Winky Wright, against whom Taylor will defend his title June 17 in his adopted hometown of Memphis, Tenn.

Say man your money can travel....I got whatever on JT all day...unless winky try to Bhop the fight ya'll in for a treat.

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Kemet man I'm so sorry I just saw this post bruh........we can do a little bit for this fight I'm always open to take folk money.... LOL.... as long as we enter into it as Friends and Brothers and exit the same it's all well and good with ya boy......shoot me an email when you get a chance folk we'll talk...

Kemet man I'm so sorry I just saw this post bruh........we can do a little bit for this fight I'm always open to take folk money.... LOL.... as long as we enter into it as Friends and Brothers and exit the same it's all well and good with ya boy......shoot me an email when you get a chance folk we'll talk...